Everybody's a sadist

[Spiral Jacobs]

I'm currently re-reading the first three books in A Song of Ice and Fire, and although I still like it a lot, I must admit I'm getting a bit depressed.

Martin just doesn't reward you as a reader. There are so many times that he smacks you in the face, as if to say "Hah! You liked this character? LOL owned!" and the few moments that he rewards the reader are very, very sparse and far between. The end of A Game Of Thrones is thrilling, I admit. But beyond that... I mean, A Storm Of Swords is one big victory for the bad guys (I just re-read the Red Wedding ). And one thing in particular that bothers me: almost every NPC in the books is either an opportunist greedy bastard, or a sadistic heartless murderer. At least when he's in the camp of the bad guys or turns out to be a bad guy. I'm starting to find that a bit tiring. There's almost no middle ground - either you're complete scum or you're a stand-up type of person who'll get tortured and killed (preferably in a nasty way). Is it really going to take 7 gazillion pages before we get the least bit of a positive feeling, a catharsis of some kind?

[Holsety]

I'd say that while Martin does tend to have unbalanced characters, he has a lot less than many fantasy books. And some of them aren't so much evil as they are idiotic - I just read Feast for Crows, and the Freys capture this pretty well.

As far as NPOV characters....Stannis is pretty conflicted, I wouldn't put him wholly on the good or the bad side. I figure he'll be an enemy-figure eventually, but he's not greedy, sadistic, or whatever.

And while Martin doesn't really do it too obviously, he is pretty good at giving some reason to the 'bad side.' I think Varys in book 1 notes that if Ned Stark had been able to stomach a product of incest on the throne, he could've stayed as Hand and done some real good.

The only group I really find tiresome is Dany's. I just find everyone involved sorta boring.

[Spiral Jacobs]

Well, after finishing my re-read and A Feast For Crows I must admit my depressed spell has passed. It's true of course that not all NPOV characters are so bad, I guess I was referring more to the 'grunts', as it were - the common footsoldier.
Some sniggering was experienced when it became clear that (aFfC spoiler)

Spoiler

the Freys, instead of avenging their lost honour, have become generally despised and are used as a curse. "What are you, a Frey?"

What I like most is what Martin does with the POV characters, by not making them black-and-white but exploring all sides, as it were, by slapping them around some to see what happens. So far this has worked best on the Lannister boys.

As for aFfC (mild spoilers?):

The group that doesn't really have my interest is the Iron Islanders...they're a bit too simplistically portrayed so far. Also, during all chapters in Dorne I was wondering what the hell those were leading up to, as basically nothing much happens or is revealed until the very last conversation. And then my last complaint: the combination of the epilogue with the very last sentence of the book as payoff was a bit useless, considering that there will be another book of at least 1000 pages before we can get back to that.
For the rest I enjoyed it a lot, some good developments on some of the characters and again with the sniggering when

Spoiler

the Cersei plot with the church played itself out.

In short, it's going to be a hell of a wait...again.